by Guy Haley
I am buffeted by a hurricane of information pouring from the dying systems of the city; a welter of pain and distress, atrocities of every kind, cascade into his mind, the death throes of a city fifty-six thousand years old. Proud memories, pleasing memories, are interposed with rape and murder and blood and fire. The higher-dimensional shrieks of dying spirits scar his mind, he feels the skin peeling from the burning spires as his own. His personality is in danger of being destroyed. I realise then it is a suicide of sorts, the Spirefather’s death. A trap for the champion, that the other cities in the rebellious league might survive.
There is little I can do. This is a Spirefather’s death curse, and Yoechakenon is letting it in. I am powerless before it. I hold tight to this man, whom I have loved for millennia. I hold him and stop him being swept away by the hates of mankind.
It slows to a trickle, this torrent of pain. The bolus pulses, and the liquid runs but sluggishly from it, then ceases.
Yoechakenon lies curled upon the floor. I can sense nothing from him.
Even deadened as my feelings are, I am terrified.
Then, he stands, slowly. The armour withdraws, running like quicksilver from him, revealing his bone-white hair and red skin. It retreats reluctantly, pooling upon the floor, and gathers itself into a short staff, ancient texts scrolling around the top and bottom; the inert form of the Armour Prime.
Yoechakenon stands naked. He looks about the room, searching, but he cannot see me. Fires have sprung up in the deep places of the chamber. Debris rattles down from above with every impact. “I will not do this any more,” he says, and I feel horror rooted deep within him. “These things, revenge and injustice, these are not what I fight for. I renounce the status of champion. I will make no more war for the Twin Emperor. I will defy fate. Thanks be to the Spirefather of Olm.”
This I did not foresee. This should not happen. This is against the tides of fate. Yoechakenon is strong of will, but here, now? This is not a point in time where fate is pliable.
It can only mean one thing.
The Stone Kin are coming.
CHAPTER FOUR
Into the Volcano
“WE’VE DONE VERY little here as yet,” said Maguire. He sat beside Holland in a small electric cart like the cargo drones, self-driving, fitted with four seats. The tube’s walls went past at a stately roll, their layered kerbs of frozen lava rising and falling, animated with false life by the progress of the open top. “There’s not been much need to, aside from the lights and cabling running down the main ways. Nature’s been very generous in providing us these little roads.”
“Can you see a time when they’ll be inhabited?” asked Holland. “The outgassing will be a problem.”
“You’re right there. We can’t seal it like the caves back in Canyon City, precisely because of the methane, and even were that not a problem, it’s just too big to close off, way beyond our current capacities here. The tube network is huge, I mean really huge, and that’s before you get into the remnant biome caverns. Nothing back home on Earth compares to it. But in the future, who knows?”
“I’ve wanted to see it for a long time,” said Holland. He looked up as best as he could in his environment suit. The ceiling was some twenty metres above him. The tunnel was slightly oval, so the walls were further away than the ceiling. The floor was smoothly rippled, a perfect pahoehoe flow – where roof falls had deposited material on the floor, it had been cleared, explained Maguire. Consequently, the ride in the six-wheeled open top was far more pleasant than Holland’s trip in the rover. “I can’t really take it in,” he said.
“The tubes are much bigger than those back home, a combination of the lower gravity and the lower density of the material,” said Maguire eagerly. He was enjoying showing off the network, and Holland enjoyed listening to him. Maguire’s enthusiasm was as infectious as his good humour. “There are over four hundred miles of tubes,” said Maguire. “Four hundred miles on Ascraeus Mons alone! The biggest tube network on Earth is Kazumura cave on Kilauea; the main tube there is forty miles long. The biggest here is twelve times that length. The geological forces here must have been immense.”
“And yet it’s all over now.”
“Pretty much. There’s some activity deep down – we’re running geothermal feasibility tests at the Canyon City science station, but pff, not likely.”
“You read Franz Heimark’s latest? He’s proposing the construction of an artificial moon-sized satellite, can you believe that?” said Holland.
Maguire’s laughter rang in Holland’s helmet speaker. “Yeah, ambitious – a bit of tidal forcing might warm the place up, but how the hell would they pull it off?”
“It’s an ambitious plan,” said Holland.
“The man is a genuine lunatic,” said Maguire. “Shooting for the Moon.”
Holland laughed with his friend, the events of last night forgotten. This wasn’t why Holland was here – as an exobiologist, he was here for the exoforms – but this kind of scenery was a big bonus. He was inside a volcano, on Mars. He felt a little giddy at the thought, and it was enough to make him forget his problems.
“See? I told you it would be worth coming here, and seriously, you haven’t seen anything yet. Wait until we get you into the caverns,” said Maguire.
Lamps were fastened every seventy-five metres along the tube, and the rover moved from light to shadow and back again, lavacicles and other drip features flashing in and out of sight. In places, these were immense shark teeth two metres long, a legacy of successive flows laying coat after coat of molten rock upon them. “Coming up in about ten seconds or so, you’ll see one of the places where the lavacicles get really impressive,” said Maguire. “Ah! Here we go.”
They rounded a corner. The tube narrowed, the road they were upon limned by breathtaking formations of rippled lava. “Arms in!” said Maguire. “It’s a tight squeeze. We had to blow a hole in this here,” said Maguire sadly, gesturing at the natural sculptures, close enough to touch. “A damn shame. Still, plenty more intact all about. And man, the caves out on low Tharsis make these tubes look pretty dull. Miyazaki got all excited about it, and trust me, I have never seen him excited about anything before, he’s like the living definition of aloof. He told us that it looks like a large part of the plains east of Ascraeus is an uplifted seabed, the caves there are full of calcium carbonate formations from the Hesperian period. He’s off to gather materials for proper exploration, he is. Wait until you see the initial fossil samples. He should be back by the time we get back ourselves. You should ask him to see them.”
Holland nodded. They were already on his list of things to do. Miyazaki was a good geologist, by all accounts, but exopaleontology fell under Holland’s remit. He felt the old hunger come back, the urge for discovery. He embraced it, relieved that the distant, heady feeling that had dogged him for days was finally lifting.
“Hey, did I tell you I’ve got a cave named after me? I didn’t, did I now?” said Maguire brightly.
“No, you didn’t.”
“Well, let’s not rush to visit it, it’s not very impressive, but it’s a nice thought anyhow.” He glanced at his watch. “By my reckoning we’ve got time to get down to the chamber head, run you through the safety protocols with Jensen, then we’ll have to head back for the station progress meeting. They’re a drag but necessary, and it’ll be a great opportunity for you to meet the rest of the team. You can be introduced properly to everyone. Dinner’s right after and that’s plenty more fun. Then tomorrow we can get you to work.”
Holland was not a big fan of meetings.
“No chance of a trip into the complex today, then?” he said tentatively.
“Into Wonderland? Not a one. You’re right to be eager, but take it slowly. The caverns are not a place to hurry into; fools rush in and all that. Once you’re settled in, Jensen’s going to drill you on safety so many times you’ll wish you never left your cosy little lab on Earth. You’ll see.”
THE TUBE
BROADENED out into a big inflationary chamber that had been blasted to make it wider. On the far side, it narrowed to a tube again, the entrance to the deeper cave systems. There the tube had been sealed by a wide airlock, its sides glued to the rock with locally fabricated foamcrete; the oxides in the soil gave the foamcrete a pinkish hue. The ’crete had not been finished, and swells of it surrounded the door in a profusion of fungoid protrusions. Where it had been hacked back to allow the door to operate, the pumice-like structure of the foam was clearly visible. It was a rough job, pioneer work.
One side of the cave was filled with neatly parked trucks and heavy equipment: flood lamps, crates, tool boxes, drills, blast shields, industrial grade seismic units, robotic near-I mules and a small earth mover with a caged cab. All of it, bar the mules, was man-operated.
The left side of the cave was walled in by metal and plastic panels, more prefab work bolted together on site, joined to the rock with foamcrete. The base camp control centre. A window looked out over the chamber floor onto the stores, a standard airlock to its right, a large rolling door further to the right of that.
Holland looked at the sealed cave airlock. Behind that door lay what he had spent his entire life studying. Exobiology was a thriving discipline, what with the discovery of the creatures of the Europan oceans and the bizarre alkane life of Titan, not to mention the remnant ecosystems here on Mars, but the arduousness and expense of interplanetary flight meant that fieldtrips remained difficult. Once Holland went through that door, it would be his first encounter with alien life in its natural environment.
A stunning thought, genuinely stunning.
Maguire shut off the truck. “Sorry about the door, we had a hell of a time deciding to put it in. It interferes with the remnant ecosystem some, but we were stuck for places to put our mission base. We decided on the end of this tube, and that meant we had to block off the seasonal outgassings. You mightn’t think it, but there’s enough methane coming out of there at the height of summer to cause a real risk, especially at the tube entrance. Luckily, another tube extended into the cave, blocked about five clicks out, not far from the surface, so we opened that up to allow the processes to continue. That’s why we are where we are. I know, I know” – Maguire held up his hands – “it’s not a perfect solution, but we lost less than a fifth of a per cent of the biomass in there, and it hasn’t otherwise affected it. And it gives us access to study it properly.”
“Point two per cent is quite a lot, Dave,” said Holland. “There is not much Martian life left.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” said Maguire. “This was a solution that the board would accept, and that did the least damage. A fecking compromise, as per usual. The AIs said it was the best outcome. If we can catalogue this lot, we’ve a chance of preserving at least some of it. Most of these organisms are extremely intolerant to oxygen, and this depth is nowhere near enough to protect them, so the ones in the higher caves would die anyway. But that’s why you’re here, eh?”
Holland nodded. His eyes remained fixed on the door; a manmade artefact framed in red rock, framed in turn by the edge of his helmet, the bedrock of Mars squeezed by human pressures inside and out. The airlock across the tube was a threshold in time, demarking one age of life from another. On this side, the beginning of human Mars, on the other side, the last refuge of the ancient Martians.
A deep voice, melodiously Scandinavian, spoke into their helmets. “Good morning, gentlemen. If you would please hurry a little. I have the Panthers coming in at eleven-hundred, and I want to be sure that Dr Holland here is fully introduced to our safety measures before they arrive.”
Maguire raised his hands and turned to the window. “Come on, Frode, this is his first time! Let the man drink it in a little.”
Holland turned to where Maguire was looking. A tall man with thinning hair, a well-trimmed beard and a sombre expression stood in the window, leaning on the desk behind the window like a preacher.
“I have not got all day.” Frode turned away from the window and picked up a tablet.
“Okay! We’re coming in,” said Maguire. There was a click and Magurie whispered conspiratorially. “That’s Frode Jensen, our resident safety guru. He’s a miserable old sod and a pedant, but a safe pair of hands.”
Jensen turned back to the window. “Learn to use your comms equipment properly, Maguire.”
“And I was about to say what a great man you are, so I was!” said Maguire, undaunted. There was another click. He laughed drily. The sound of it reminded Holland of long nights in the Beer Steer back in Houston. “Whoops. I can’t get this mental switching system right, can I? Ah, well, can’t charm them all, eh?” he said, then with less jollity: “I swear he has no sense of humour.”
They dusted each other off with soft brushes. The station airlock slid open. Inside, they vacuum-cleaned each other and took their helmets off. Maguire untwisted his gauntlets and helped Holland with his suit.
“Thanks,” Holland said. “I’m struggling a little with this.”
“Ah, you’ll be used to it in no time at all, I promise.”
They stowed their suits. The inner lock opened onto an office, dimly lit, cramped with machines and racks of shelves, although it was not a small space. Bare rock and patches of foamcrete formed the far wall. A couple of lance-cut doors led through the stone, another off to the left went through a metal and carbon partition.
The Scandinavian stood, tablet in hand, its display lighting his overalls. The light in there was blue, smoothing his skin, and it was impossible to tell how old Jensen was. But wasn’t that the way these days? thought Holland. Pretty much everyone who could afford them took anti-gerontics, especially up here; they were efficient at mopping up the effects of the free radicals one received just by being on Mars.
“I am Dr Frode Jensen. I am station safety officer and the head of the engineering department.”
“We all wear two or more hats around here,” said Maguire. “He’s the gatekeeper to the underworld, a real Cerberus. You want to watch him.”
Jensen gave Maguire an unamused look. Holland thought Maguire might be right about his sense of humour. “Welcome to Deep Two, Dr Holland.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask, where’s Deep One?” Holland said.
Jensen and Maguire looked at each other. Maguire clasped his elbows. He grinned sheepishly. “Deep Two, because Deep One... Well, that was here originally, but caught fire. We got methane seepage, through faulting in the rock. Bad mix, that and oxygen. A wee bit volatile, shall we say. They don’t put that on the file.”
Jensen regarded Maguire sternly. “This is why I am a pedant.” He thrust his tablet into Maguire’s hands.
“A good job you are too, my friend,” said Maguire.
“Now, if we may, I must take you through the safety protocols,” said Jensen. And he did, at great length. There were no more than Holland had feared, standard for a hazardous environment, but Jensen wished to impress them upon him. That and his rigorous system of equipment assignment, sample cataloguing and so forth.
“Bless them, but Marsform save their bigger bucks for the terraforming operation,” said Maguire, by way of an excuse for Jensen insisting each hammer was correctly signed out. “We do important work here, but we’re a sideshow to the main event.”
“If I may,” said Holland diplomatically – the Swede practically winced whenever Maguire opened his mouth, he’d rather not elicit the same reaction – “is there not an automated system for all this?”
“Yes,” said Jensen. “All equipment has a dotchip with an individual gridsig, but we still require manual scanning of all boxcodes on removal. There are few AI here to keep tabs on us, hardly any near-I even,” said Jensen. “And although our computer systems have not yet failed, if they did, we would be forced to rely entirely on ourselves, and with limited supplies.”
“Better to be prepared, as the scouts used to say,” misquoted Maguire. “All this has been designed with the input of human and AI hea
d shrinkers, supposed to give us an edge.”
“It makes sense. If we’re inured to doing everything ourselves, it won’t be a shock relying on ourselves,” said Holland, who was not above trying to ingratiate himself with new people. He loathed himself for it, as useful a trait as it was. He worried it made him appear weak.
“Yes,” said Jensen. “Correct.”
Deep Two was a complex of small rooms, half prefab, half cut from the rock. Besides the entry-cum-store office, there was a small canteen with barely enough room for the six chairs and table in it, a kitchen with a microwave and fridge, a cramped bedroom with two bunks, a toilet with limited washing facilites, and a number of store cupboards full of dried food, rock samples, and a tiny workshop cluttered with equipment in various states of repair. All of it was meticulously stowed and catalogued.
Jensen showed them into the observation suite, and Holland paid a little more attention.
“Here we monitor all expeditions into the cavern system,” explained Jensen.
This was the largest room in the station, one wall taken up by a large window – shuttered, much to Holland’s disappointment. The light was dim, most of it coming from gelscreens. There were four work stations. Only one was currently occupied, by a woman with flat, sad-looking hair. Edith Vance, thought Holland. Disappointingly dowdy. She looked better in her file photo.
She looked up when they came in. She had protruding eyes that made her appear surprised to see them, but she smiled and nodded in a way that suggested she wasn’t.
“We’ve at least three of us on duty here when there’s a team in the cave,” said Jensen. “One of those is often the AI, if she’s not on constant watch below. Vance is our medical officer. Like the AI, if she’s not down there herself, then she is in here with me.” He flicked on a screen, pointing out biomonitors, inactive now, and displays that displayed the suits’ integrity readouts. “The environment is such down there that monitoring is necessary. The smallest sign of a problem, and we will give the order to pull back to base camp.”